This article addresses the character and potential of the radical cosmopolitanism that is currently flourishing within the social sciences. I explore how cosmopolitanism is articulated in a number of disciplines–including international law, international relations, sociology and political philosophy–and how it conceives of its own age. I focus first of all on the timeconsciousness that informs the cosmopolitan representation of modernity, in particular its projection of a rupturebetween the old ‘Westphalian’ order of nation states and the advancing cosmopolitan order of the present, and, second, on the nature of cosmopolitan critiques of nationalism, socialism and ‘modernist’ social and political thought in general. Behind this focus lie a question over the extent to which cosmopolitanism replicates in its own normative proposals the defects of that which it criticizes, and another question over the means by which the critical kernel of contemporary cosmopolitanism can be separated from its doctrinal shell.

Taking the ‘Ism’ Out of Cosmopolitanism: An Essay in Reconstruction

The standard view of Kant's position on international relations is that he advocates a voluntary league of states and rejects the ideal of a world federation of states as dangerous, unrealistic, and conceptually incoherent. This standard view reigns in both the Kant literature and the debates among Kantian political theorists. However much John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, for example, may disagree over whether Kant is right to defend a voluntary association of states, their dispute is premised on the standard interpretation of Kant's position. In The Law of Peoples, Rawls's appeal to Kant's purported reasons for rejecting the ideal of a world government serves as a theoretical short-cut, relieving him of the task of discussing the desirability of a world federation of states. 1 In Habermas's 1995 essay on Kant's Perpetual Peace, the case for transforming the United Nations into a cosmopolitan democracy with strengthened coercive powers is preceded by a lengthy argument showing that Kant's position in Perpetual Peace is riddled with contradictions and that Kant's own principles should have led him to argue for a federative state of states with coercive powers. 2 In this essay I argue that the standard view of Kant's position is mistaken and that he in fact holds a third position that combines the defence of a voluntary league with an argument for the ideal of a world federation with coercive powers. I do so via an examination of the three main criticisms that are usually leveled against Kant. These criticisms can be found throughout the Kant literature and in the writings of Kant's opponents, but they are particularly central to recent attempts to use Kant against Kant to advocate the establishment of a world government. First, he is criticized for scaling back, on empirical grounds, the ideal of a state of states to that of a voluntary non-coercive league of states, while still maintaining that pure practical reason demands a state of states. Critics charge that consistency requires that he advocate a federative state of states with coercive powers, and that Kant's appeal to the fact that states do not want to join such an institution makes for a decidedly un-Kantian line of argument. 3 Second, critics object that a state of states is not a contradiction in terms and hence that Kant should not have rejected it on grounds of conceptual incoherence. 4 Third, critics regularly object that a mere league would not help bring about peace because there is no practical difference between a voluntary non-coercive league and no league at all. 5

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Approaching Perpetual Peace: Kant's Defence of a League of States and his Ideal of a World Federation

Democratic peace studies have traditionally identified Kantian “republicanism” with procedural democracy and largely ignored liberalism and constitutionalism, which are even more fundamental for Kant's reasoning behind the liberal peace. A closer look into his major political works reveals that peaceful relations are expected from states with the protection of individual freedoms (liberalism), the rule of law and legal equality (constitutionalism), and representative government (democracy). Only when all three constitutive elements are jointly considered can we uncover the multifaceted nature of Kant's approach to the domestic sources of international peace. In this way, we not only find that monadic and dyadic expectations are consistent with Kant's theory, but also that both normative and interest-based explanations for international peace can equally draw on Kant as their theoretical precursor. We further demonstrate that it is plausible to infer that the Kantian legacy is related to civil peace as well. The propositions we derive from our theoretical reexamination of the Kantian legacy are strongly supported in our quantitative empirical test. Moreover, constitutional liberalism, rather than democracy, shows to be both more central for Kant's theory and empirically more robustly related to international as well as domestic peace.

The Kantian Liberal Peace (Revisited)

Scholars in international relations have failed to note a paradox about the balance of power: the concept of checks and balances and equilibria underlie classical Liberal constitutional and economic theory. Interest balancing interest lies at the core of the Liberal solution to the problem of anarchy, power, and human nature, whether in politics, economics, or the international sphere. Liberal scholars have adopted instead a rationalist utilitarian or a normative democratic approach. At the same time, Realists in international relations predict a balance, which realist scholars in domestic politics, like Schattschneider, have effectively questioned. This intellectual confusion denies Liberal theory a robust view of international politics, not least because the balancing principle is erroneously rejected as conservative. The confusion also undermines the coherence of Realist theory, which has hitherto tried to accommodate opposing predictions (balance of power and power concentrations) under one paradigm. I offer an explanation of how this conflation of theories arose. Conflating Liberalism with idealism leaves Realism as the only prudent alternative in international politics. The relation between the two theories is not zero-sum: both capture important aspects of international dynamics, and each can ignore the other only at serious cost.Deborah Boucoyannis is Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University (boucoyan@fas.harvard.edu). For comments and suggestions over the time the article has been in gestation, the author thanks Bear Braumoeller, Tim Crawford, Daniel Drezner, Nisha Fazal, David Grewal, Arman Grigorian, Mark Haas, Russ Hamilton, Michael Heaney, Jacques Hymans, Seth Jones, Andreas Kalyvas, Jacob Levy, Jack Levy, John Mearsheimer, Jennifer Mitzen, Kevin Narizny, Jacob Schiff, Jack Snyder, Kenneth Waltz, Alex Wendt, Bill Wohlforth, and the participants at the Political Theory and PISP workshops at the University of Chicago. Special thanks are due to Monica Toft, John Ikenberry, and Jennifer Hochschild for their support of the article; it was mostly written with the generous support of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

The International Wanderings of a Liberal Idea, or Why Liberals Can Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Balance of Power

When surveying the cosmopolitan literature one is often struck by the ease with which the state is rendered morally and empirically otiose and by resulting ambiguities about the role states could play in creating a cosmopolitan condition. In response to these ambiguities, the purpose of this article is to examine some recent cosmopolitan arguments and to see what answers, if any, they have for bridging the gap between cosmopolitan theory and state practice. By doing so, this article will map out the recent relationship between cosmopolitanism and the state while also suggesting that cosmopolitans should reconsider a research agenda based on the idea of responsible cosmopolitan states as a means to create stronger links between cosmopolitan theory and contemporary international practice.

Bringing the State Back into Cosmopolitanism: The Idea of Responsible Cosmopolitan States

This text looks at Kant's work within the field of industrial relations. It re-examines Kantian theory, and the author argues that Kantian theory brings together the idea of international relations principles and the actual practicalities of those ideas.

Georg Cavallar

Papers

Kant and the theory and the practice of international right